Life without stock is barely worth living, and you will never attain demi-glace without.
What most people don’t get about professional-level cooking is that it is not all about the best recipe, the most innovative presentation, the most creative marriage of ingredients, flavours and textures; that, presumably, was all arranged long before you sat down to dinner. Line cooking – the real business of preparing the food you eat – is more about consistency, about mindless, unvarying repetition, the same series of tasks performed over and over and over again in exactly the same way.
And I’ve long believed that good food, good eating is all about risk.
We are, after all, citizens of the world – a world filled with bacteria, some friendly, some not so friendly. Do we really want to travel in hermetically sealed popemobiles through the rural provinces of France, Mexico and the Far East, eating only in Hard Rock Cafes and McDonald’s? Or do we want to eat without fear, tearing into the local stew, the humble taqueria’s mystery meat, the sincerely offered gift of a lightly grilled fish head? I know what I want. I want it all.
I talk about these mysterious forces all the time with my chef cronies. Nothing illustrates them more than the Last Meal Game. You’re getting into the electric chair tomorrow morning. They’re gonna strap you down, turn up the juice and fry your ass until your eyes sizzle and pop like McNuggets. You’ve got one meal left. What are you having for dinner? When playing this game with chefs – and we’re talking good chefs here- the answers are invariable simple ones.
A mama’s boy, loner, intellectual, voracious reader and gourmand, Dimitri was a man of esoteric skills and appetites: a gambler, philosopher, gardener, fly-fisherman, fluent in Russian and German as well as having an amazing command of English. He loved antiquated phrases, dry sarcasm, military jargon, regional dialect, and the New York Times crossword puzzle – to which he was hopelessly addicted.
I believe celiac disease is a very serious ailment, and if you’re diagnosed with it, I’m pleased that there are now gluten-free options, but these people who are treating gluten as, you know, an equivalent of Al Qaeda are worrying to me.
With my little short-shorts a permanent affront, I was quickly becoming a sullen, moody, difficult little bastard.
It was not a pretty sight, all these pale, gangly, pimpled youths, in a frenzy of hunger and sexual frustration, shredding bread.
We knew well how much these people were paying for cocaine – and that the more coke cost, the more people wanted it. We applied the same market plan to our budding catering operation, along with a similar pricing structure, and business was suddenly very, very, good.
I like cooking pasta. Maybe it’s that I always wanted to be Italian American in some dark part of my soul; maybe I get off on that final squirt of emulsifying extra virgin, just after the basil goes in, I don’t know.
But I’m simply not going to deceive anybody about the life as I’ve seen it. It’s all here: the good, the bad and the ugly.
The bartender is Irish. Jumped a student visa about ten years ago but nothing for him to worry about. The cook, though, is Mexican. Some poor bastard at ten dollars an hour – and probably has to wash the dishes, too. La Migra take notice of his immigration status – they catch sight of his bowl cut on the way home to Queens and he’ll have a problem. He looks different than the Irish and the Canadians – and he’s got Lou Dobbs calling specifically for his head every night on the radio.
But that cold soup stayed with me. It resonated, waking me up, making me aware of my tongue, and in some way, preparing me for future events.
John F. Kennedy said something truly terrifying – guaranteed to make every parent’s blood run cold: “To have a child is to give fate a hostage.
He was a crusty old bastard, dressed like my uncle in ancient denim coveralls, espadrilles and beret. He had a leathery, tanned and windblown face, hollow cheeks, and the tiny broken blood vessels on nose and cheeks that everyone seemed to have from drinking so much of the local Bordeaux.
It was a protein rush to the cortex, a clean, three-ingredient high, eaten with the hands. Could anything be better than that? As.
Customers should understand that what they are paying for, in any restaurant situation, is not just what’s on the plate – but everything that’s not on the plate: all the bone, skin, fat, and waste product which the chef did pay for, by the pound.
Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter-faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn. To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living.
As a cook, your station, and its condition, its state of readiness, is an extension of your nervous system – and it is profoundly upsetting if another cook or, God forbid, a waiter – disturbs your precisely and carefully laid-out system.